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During the duel, Jiang Cheng gets poisoned pretty much as soon as his arm shatters. Everything is such a muddle of pain that he doesn’t remember it happening beyond the blood on his sword and the Ghost General’s snarling face like a mirror held up in front of him—then the impact, the crack, the sudden breathlessness, the burning blue sky spinning around him as he tumbled toward the craggy ground. Then nothing. But it makes sense for it to have been corpse poison. Unsurprising in retrospect, what with how foul and resentment-steeped everything is in the Burial Mounds. He spends several days lying half-conscious with fever in Wei Wuxian’s ridiculous cave. His body hurts, in a distant way, in his arm and also his chest. The thirst hurts worse, though it fades in time. His core spins, sputters. He burns, and burns, then freezes.
He remembers Wei Wuxian saying he’ll be all right. Wei Wuxian’s hands on him. After lying useless for a long while, Jiang Cheng eventually turns his face into that touch, slow and pathetic. Wei Wuxian hiccups a laugh.
~
The fever breaks eventually. It is all right, it turns out, since luckily—despite Wei Wuxian’s usual chickenscratch handwriting—he can still imitate Jiang Cheng’s neater characters flawlessly; when Jiang Cheng collapsed, Wei Wuxian (possibly directed by the Wen woman, who seems shrewd) sent a message in ‘Jiang-zongzhu’s’ hand down to the Jiang disciples waiting for him in town, letting them know he’d be held up. But once Jiang Cheng is recovered enough to function again, albeit clumsily, humiliation flares like a coal in his gut. Wei Wuxian is leaving the Jiang for the Wen, fine, and yet Jiang Cheng can’t even pull away cleanly, had to lie limp at Wei Wuxian’s feet first.
He sets his jaw, drags his numb limbs upright, and bids Wei Wuxian a stiff goodbye at the edge of the Burial Mounds. Wei Wuxian’s Wens watch from a distance. The Ghost General, at least, doesn’t appear to be present.
For all that Wei Wuxian was so eager to get Jiang Cheng gone before the duel, he lingers now, pecking with his fingers at Jiang Cheng’s filthy sleeves and the clean bandages around his arm and chest and even tugging on his hair, chattering. So A-Cheng how do you feel, are you dizzy or hungry, are you cold, are you sure you can get down the mountain all right, how’s your arm, you’ll heal up so quick. Like he didn’t sic his pet corpse on Jiang Cheng to break the arm himself, like Jiang Cheng didn’t, in the same instant, sink Sandu into Wei Wuxian’s gut (which is healing almost as slow as Jiang Cheng’s arm, Jiang Cheng can see the bandages peeking out from the overlap of Wei Wuxian’s loose robes). Like Wei Wuxian hasn’t spent the past year practically shouting to the heavens that he can’t wait to shake Jiang Cheng off and start his real life.
Even if that life consists of starving in a charnel pit with the clan that ripped Yunmeng Jiang apart and devoured it. He’d rather have that.
“Enough,” Jiang Cheng snaps eventually. His voice is still hoarse from the fever. He tried cycling his core to fix it (vanity), but his qi is still sluggish, and the core’s always been volatile since the restoration anyway. “My disciples are waiting; I don’t have time to laze around here. Do something about your resentful energy infestation, if you expect to actually grow anything from this soil.”
“Aiya,” says Wei Wuxian, “look on the bright side, Jiang Cheng: If the radishes don’t sprout, maybe Wen Qing will let me plant potatoes instead.”
Jiang Cheng only responds to that with the sneer it deserves, and turns away. “Walk slowly as you go,” Wei Wuxian calls after him.
Jiang Cheng walks away quickly, without glancing back. His body is heavy, distant; it requires all his concentration to move, so he doesn’t let himself be distracted by looking behind him. No matter how his eyes ache, they don’t blur.
~ ~ ~
Wei Wuxian is the one to come to Lotus Pier, though.
It’s only been a few months. Jiang Cheng would have expected him to stay holed up in the Burial Mounds forever (that would be the smart thing to do, with the Jin breathing down all their necks and A-jie still working on talking Jin Zixuan around), or at least stay until the next hopeless cause caught his interest. Even if Wei Wuxian trying to lie low is just delaying the inevitable, a delay is still good.
But Wei Wuxian shows up in the deepest hours of an autumn night, sliding through Jiang Cheng’s window like they’re still teens sneaking into each other’s rooms. Like he never left. “You’ll get old before your time, hunched over working late like that,” he says from the window, instead of a proper greeting.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t quite jolt, but his thoughts stutter. He consciously makes himself keep writing, with only the smallest blot left on the letter he’s drafting. It’s just a reply to Ouyang-zongzhu, so who cares if it’s smudged. “Some of us take our duties seriously,” he says, which is also not a proper greeting, but fuck Wei Wuxian, anyway. He didn’t even send word he was coming despite the danger of being seen together. And what does he care if Jiang Cheng’s still up, Jiang Cheng’s sleep schedule was always shit, but it’s grown even worse these past months; he often stays awake for days at a time now. It’s disorienting sometimes how day and night blend together, but in a way it’s lucky that Jiang Cheng’s gotten so good at functioning on not much sleep and little food. Alone, there’s more to do than ever.
He grits his teeth, finishes the line (he’ll have to rewrite this letter later, because even if he doesn’t actually care about Ouyang-zongzhu Jiang Cheng has to care), and lays the brush down with a precise clack. Then he turns to look at Wei Wuxian.
Wei Wuxian looks like shit. He looks like a fierce corpse. He looks too thin, thinner than he would be if he’d stayed in Lotus Pier, and his eyes too bright. He’s too bright to look at for long. “Oh, nice!” he says. The bones of his skull move under his skin. “You can write as usual. I thought I’d smashed your arm up so good you’d be dictation-only for months.”
“It was my left arm. So do you expect me to feed you or what?” Jiang Cheng says, to Wei Wuxian’s shoulder rather than his face. Lotus Pier’s kitchens may be barer than they used to be, but with Wei Wuxian so skinny, he probably can’t eat much anyway. Douse something in enough chili oil and he’ll gulp it down no matter what.
Wei Wuxian flaps a hand. “I’m not really hungry. The first crop of radishes just came in at the Burial Mounds, so I’ve been dining like an emperor.” He makes a slight face at the same time as Jiang Cheng. Neither of them really likes radishes.
“So…” Jiang Cheng says.
“So,” parrots Wei Wuxian. “I did say I’d come sometimes; Yiling and Lotus Pier are so close. Anyway, don’t mind me, Jiang Cheng! You just keep doing your bigshot sect leader stuff, I know that’s your favorite.” He wiggles his fingers and eyebrows. He is insufferable.
In the end they don’t actually do anything. Jiang Cheng writes his letters, teeth clenched so hard he thinks they’ll crack, pointedly not looking over at Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian lies on the floor and mutters to himself as he does some shit with talismans, glancing at Jiang Cheng every ten seconds as if to gauge his reaction. At one point he tosses a handful of fresh talismans over at Jiang Cheng to stick, each stinging in a slightly different way, all over him— “Piss off,” Jiang Cheng says, ripping them off, and Wei Wuxian sulks—then, when those don’t blow up or cover Jiang Cheng in itching powder or whatever he expected to happen, goes uncharacteristically silent as he buckles down to scribble more notes.
It’s… it’s not like how they used to be, at all. Even if they used to spend hours like this, with Jiang Cheng working and Wei Wuxian dicking around on his latest project. It’s all wrong now. The fact that it seems so similar just makes the wrongness more palpable.
Eventually, once it’s truly, exhaustingly late, Jiang Cheng decides enough is enough; Wei Wuxian can either eat something, get some actual sleep, or get out. But before he can say anything, Wei Wuxian jumps to his feet, arms stuffed with notes. “Okay,” he says. “All right. I’m definitely onto something here, and Jiang-zongzhu has been so hospitable, I shouldn’t take up any more of his time. I’ll, ha, for the road—” He sweeps over to Jiang Cheng’s desk, so close his hand hits Jiang Cheng’s as he grabs Jiang Cheng’s cold cup of tea, drains it, fires a grin at Jiang Cheng over the rim. He twitches weirdly, as if he’s thinking of patting Jiang Cheng on the shoulder, or—but he misses, and kind of swats at Jiang Cheng instead, so quick Jiang Cheng doesn’t even really feel it. Then, without doing anything, Wei Wuxian’s leaping out the window. “I’ll be back—Don’t do anything shixiong wouldn’t do, unless it’s really funny—”
And then he’s gone, a few scraps of talisman paper floating down in his wake. Jiang Cheng stares after him, only able to actually look now that he’s left.
What the fuck.
~ ~ ~
Well. Jiang Cheng figures, now that Wei Wuxian got whatever that was out of his system, it won’t happen again.
It’s fine. Jiang Cheng focuses even harder on the sect. He’s loved Yunmeng Jiang fiercely his whole life, both the intangible ideal of it and now the slowly growing number of disciples, each trained by Jiang Cheng’s own hand, each of their faces familiar to him. He was so proud that they stood with him in the war, and so enraged that the previous Jiang never would again, that he thought he’d choke sometimes—on the heat of it, like swallowing a live ember. Thought that he’d burn alive. The ember is a smolder, now, but he’s always been best suited for the everyday grunt work of running a sect, or at least suited about as well as he was for war. Duty. He can always grasp duty when nothing else is there.
So he drafts letters. He trains the disciples. He hunts monsters. He dodges his doctors. He tries to keep his shouting to a minimum (unless people are being idiots). He tries to cycle his miraculous, increasingly recalcitrant core. He writes to A-jie, who worries but is happier now than she’s ever seemed. He takes notes late into the night, scribbling down everything he can remember of the original Yunmeng Jiang’s history and techniques to restore the burnt shell of their library. He argues politely with the Jin about the details of A-jie’s future wedding. He meets with other sect leaders who’d eat his people alive if they could, and keeps his face blank as he carves out careful chunks of his home to trade away to them for what the rest of Yunmeng needs. He could work himself until he’s dead in the ground and still be—still it’ll never be enough. But the sect takes everything he offers. Needs everything he offers. Needs everything. So things are fine. He’s doing fine.
But then, over a month after Wei Wuxian’s bizarre visit, it happens again. Wei Wuxian, at the window. Wei Wuxian, in Jiang Cheng’s rooms. The twitchiness, the awkward non-conversation, the dawn departure.
Eventually, it’s routine: Every few weeks, Wei Wuxian comes back. He slips into his old place like a nighttime thief, teeth flashing white in the dark. He rambles without saying a single real thing, amuses himself by smacking talismans onto Jiang Cheng at random intervals, flicks his fingers along the edges of Jiang Cheng’s robes as he mutters to himself. He keeps touching Jiang Cheng with little flitting, fleeting, hasty movements—far touchier than he had been for years before defecting, when he kept sliding away from Jiang Cheng’s awkward attempts to rebalance them via self-conscious, one-armed hugs or, failing that, jabbed elbows. He refuses food, but Jiang Cheng does eke out a major victory there: Jiang Cheng doesn’t eat really much at all now—his disciples worry, but he shrugs it off with the explanation of how he’s got a talent for inedia—so he takes to leaving half-filled plates around his office when Wei Wuxian visits. At first Wei Wuxian doesn’t deign to steal any bites like he used to, but eventually—once Jiang Cheng resorts to adding too much chili oil, smearing sauce across the plates as if there’s a portion already missing, making sure the utensils have rice or crumbs stuck to them, casually implying that the whatever-it-is is a second helping because the harvests have been good (they haven’t, but Yunmeng has seen worse), and, for verisimilitude and as a last recourse, leaving a prominent (ash-flavored, he spits them out) bite taken out of the topmost thing and warning Wei Wuxian to keep his hands off—Wei Wuxian sometimes will nibble on the food like he’s getting away with something. It satisfies something in Jiang Cheng to glance over at a partially eaten bowl and know that he managed to fill Wei Wuxian up, at least a few bites’ worth, for the span of an evening. Of course, then the gnawing frustration comes right back because, what, his efforts are worth only a few bites? But it’s probably better than nothing.
Anyway. Whether Wei Wuxian eats or not, rests or not, almost-touches Jiang Cheng or not, he always skitters away before morning.
Jiang Cheng never lets himself assume Wei Wuxian will come again. He barely even thinks of it, in between these little social calls. The itch under Jiang Cheng’s skin when Wei Wuxian is gone—the pull between his own inescapable body and Wei Wuxian’s absent one like thread in a wound, like a smell he can’t clear from his nostrils, like a taut, vibrating string that starts in the pit of his chest and stretches all the way to Yiling—has nothing to do with him.
~ ~ ~
Tonight, Wei Wuxian is jitterier than usual, almost frantic. His restlessness catches Jiang Cheng too, prickling in his limbs.
(A-jie had asked to visit Wei Wuxian in her wedding clothes. Wei Wuxian had hemmed and hawed and then said it was too risky—too risky? For that hothead?—but now has showed up at Lotus Pier anyway the week after they were all supposed to meet. Jiang Cheng deserves an award for capitulating to their normal weird nighttime routine instead of biting Wei Wuxian’s unfilial face off and dragging him to Lanling in restraints.)
Wei Wuxian seems to interpret Jiang Cheng happening to put his brush down as a sign that Jiang Cheng is done with work for the night—wrong, sect work is never done, and things are even busier now with Jiang Yanli’s wedding almost here—or at least a sign that Jiang Cheng’s free to be shoved around. So with sheer manic needling, he gets Jiang Cheng up and out of his office, out into Lotus Pier proper. He hasn’t asked to see it before, not once since he started visiting. “We’ll have a scenic stroll!” he says, grinning.
Shadows flicker in the corners of Jiang Cheng’s periphery as they walk. All the lanterns are low, and the guards are stationed too far from this area to hear Wei Wuxian’s prattle. Even the night noises are hushed. Wei Wuxian darts around, apparently without purpose. He trails his fingers along the sanded-smooth walkway railings, looks out over the night-black lakes that have finally been fully cleared of ash and muck and bones. He chatters, scattershot, the way he does when his mind is focused elsewhere.
“It’s beautiful,” Wei Wuxian says, gazing up at the grand northside pavilion. One finger brushes over the back of Jiang Cheng’s wrist, then away again. Jiang Cheng’s skin prickles. “You’re really doing it, you’ve restored so much. Look at the woodwork on this!”
“We rebuilt that pavilion before you left for the Burial Mounds,” says Jiang Cheng. Then he steels himself, and says, “Wei Wuxian. What are you doing here?”
Wei Wuxian’s answering grin is skeletal. “Got a whim. And aiya, it’s hardly the first time I’ve dropped by! Hey, maybe we should go swimming while I’m here. There’s nowhere to take a dip in the Burial Mounds—well, there’s the blood pool, but, uh, haha.” He tugs at Jiang Cheng’s sleeve as if he can just slip the whole thing off without Jiang Cheng noticing.
“It’s the middle of winter, don’t you dare try to shove me in the lake—Wei Wuxian.” Jiang Cheng snaps his sleeve out of Wei Wuxian’s grip and grabs Wei Wuxian’s wrists in return. Not bare skin since that’s too personal, he’s only touching the bracers, but Wei Wuxian stills anyway. “Why are you here?”
Wei Wuxian barely eats when he comes here, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t take anything Jiang Cheng has to offer. Well, of course he wouldn’t. Rejection so strong it apparently extends even to A-jie, who deserves everything good. But why fucking come at all, then?
“I just need to—” Wei Wuxian cuts himself off, staring forward somewhere at the vicinity of Jiang Cheng’s chest. Then his expression shifts to the face he makes when he’s had what he thinks is a good idea. “I just miss you, sometimes. I miss seeing you.” It lands like a punch to Jiang Cheng’s chest. Wei Wuxian doesn’t even quite sound as if he’s talking shit. His wrists turn in Jiang Cheng’s grip, Wei Wuxian’s hands sliding up Jiang Cheng’s arms. “Lemme see you, yeah? Come on, shidi, I want to see.”
Jiang Cheng doesn’t get what he’s doing even as Wei Wuxian herds him backwards until his back is pressed against a wall. Doesn’t get it when Wei Wuxian steps in even closer, the coarse fabric of his robes rasping against the softer silk of Jiang Cheng’s, then closer still, his eyes darting first to Jiang Cheng’s dumb uncomprehending face and then his downturned mouth and then to his throat. Doesn’t get it until Wei Wuxian mutters something and steals that last bit of distance to press his mouth, wet and prickling with teeth, to Jiang Cheng’s.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t breathe.
What. What the fuck.
What the fuck, Wei Wuxian has never wanted—not him, like this. Or, this isn’t want, obviously, but, but whatever this is, want-adjacent—
His mouth has parted in sheer shock. Wei Wuxian licks the inside of his lip, which would be gross but with Jiang Cheng’s brain nonfunctional it just registers as pressure-sensation-heat. It suddenly seems as though Jiang Cheng hasn’t felt real warmth in months. “Here, let me, come on,” Wei Wuxian murmurs, lips sliding over Jiang Cheng’s jawline.
He presses forward again and Jiang Cheng shuffles back, still stupid with disbelief. Everything has gone flat and somehow far-away despite the heat radiating from Wei Wuxian’s hands, his breath, the wetness of Jiang Cheng’s own mouth. Jiang Cheng’s back hits a door and the moonlight gets blocked out and something rams into the backs of his knees and he tips backward like an amateur in his first spar, Wei Wuxian falling down over him. They’ve tumbled into a storage room filled with stacked bundles of cloth to be used for winter clothing, the cheapest possible that can still keep people warm(ish, not as warm as Jiang Cheng should be keeping them). Jiang Cheng’s bad arm gives out as he tries to support their combined weight; the bundles shift under them and almost dump them on the floor. Wei Wuxian yelps, then recovers with a grin he probably thinks is charming but mainly comes across as frantic. “Oof—yeah, yeah, see, just like this.”
“Like,” Jiang Cheng croaks finally—he still doesn’t seem to be breathing— “what. What do you think you’re doing.”
Wei Wuxian gives him an incredulous look. “Experimenting, what do you think?” Then he sits back, and drags open Jiang Cheng’s robes.
Jiang Cheng’s eyes automatically snap away. He rarely looks at his own body anymore. He swam almost every day when he was younger, and liked long, hot, indulgent baths. Nowadays he avoids looking down as he changes clothes, and scrubs himself as fast as he can when bathing. Even the texture of the skin is too much to bear sometimes, scar-roped and foreign, never mind actually seeing it.
The ruin doesn’t seem to bother Wei Wuxian, though. He lays his hand on the faint scar below Jiang Cheng’s navel where Baoshan Sanren had restored his core. The burning warmth of Wei Wuxian’s palm—the shock of being touched at all—makes Jiang Cheng’s abdomen jump. His pulse beats in his neck, first syrup-slow as usual, then quickening.
From there, Wei Wuxian sweeps his hand over to Jiang Cheng’s side, up his ribcage, appraising all the little marks and divots there where cuts hadn’t healed quite right during Sunshot. Then runs it across the whip-scars that layer Jiang Cheng’s pectorals, his rough palm rasping over the dead flesh (the ugly sound of it makes sourness rise in the back of Jiang Cheng’s throat. “Hey,” he hisses, twitching)—then across, first the mottled skin of Jiang Cheng’s badly-healed left arm and then the spidery burns from Zidian on his right. Then down again to a knot of scar tissue over Jiang Cheng’s solar plexus that he doesn’t even remember getting, which says something about his fucking life, considering how big the scar is and how grave the wound must have been. Wei Wuxian’s fingers stay there for a moment, rubbing in little circles.
Then both his hands slide up so he’s holding Jiang Cheng properly in place, hands framing his ribcage. Their legs tangle; Jiang Cheng makes a harsh noise as Wei Wuxian’s thigh pushes between his. “Wait—”
“Oh, uh,” Wei Wuxian says, blinking down. Jiang Cheng blinks hard too, gritting his teeth as he stares at the wall. He’s not hard, and now Wei Wuxian can tell.
Jiang Cheng never had much of a sex drive even before Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu… happened, and since then, to hell with all that—but this is Wei Wuxian. It’s different. This is closer to wanting than Jiang Cheng thought he’d ever get from his golden, laughing shixiong, who fucking swore he’d stay, who left him, and now he’s come back for a night to flop down on top of Jiang Cheng, to practically hold him. And in response Jiang Cheng’s not even hard and now Wei Wuxian sees that. Jiang Cheng kind of wishes he were dead, for true. If there’s one time he needed his damn body to cooperate—
“That’s okay!” Wei Wuxian has the nerve to chirp. He wriggles his hand down into Jiang Cheng’s trousers and starts stroking him. Too dry, bad angle, it sucks. “It’s cold out, totally to be expected! Just give me a minute to help. Shidi’s nervous, huh?”
“You fucking asshole,” Jiang Cheng hisses, squirming, “who’s nervous—” And then he realizes that even if this physically doesn’t feel like much to him, Wei Wuxian is getting hard. Slowly, but steady, rocking his hips down against Jiang Cheng’s thigh as he gives his terrible handjob.
Relief lands like a physical blow, then blooms with bruising intensity. With a shudder, Jiang Cheng’s body bucks up into Wei Wuxian’s chafing grip without Jiang Cheng even telling it to, and when Wei Wuxian laughs he sounds almost as relieved. He shifts his weight over Jiang Cheng, expression going focused, and starts stroking him in earnest.
He’s bad at it. He grips Jiang Cheng too hard and then too gentle and his rhythm is nonexistent; his free hand prods around the rest of Jiang Cheng’s body like he’s mapping him out. Except when he gets too distracted by jerking Jiang Cheng’s dick to remember the rest of him. Except when he gets too distracted by the rest of him to remember to jerk Jiang Cheng’s dick. He’s so bad at it that Jiang Cheng is kind of livid that this is the best, the most, that he’s felt in months. Wei Wuxian probably still has haunted Burial Mounds dirt under his ragged-bitten nails and he’s trying to absolutely strangle Jiang Cheng’s cock and still Jiang Cheng keeps shivering and twisting under his hands, could practically cry from how fucking good it is. The outrage.
Finally Jiang Cheng loses patience and sits half-up, nearly unseating Wei Wuxian from where he straddles Jiang Cheng’s hips. Wei Wuxian squawks, his look of concentration breaking open. Jiang Cheng clumsily gets his own hand around Wei Wuxian’s dick—the angle is even worse now, and it doesn’t help that Wei Wuxian is still mostly dressed, his sash only slightly loosened—and tugs him out. Wei Wuxian hisses as the chilly air hits his cock. He’s wetter than Jiang Cheng, not as thick but definitely longer, his cock already slick with precome and blood-hard and beading beautifully at the tip. Thank god. Jiang Cheng gets their cocks pressed together in a slide of hot skin on cool, gets his hand around both of them at once so his wet fingers accidentally tangle with Wei Wuxian’s. “Not gonna just lie here,” he says, with what he thinks is remarkable clarity despite his numb tongue, and squeezes. “C’mon. You too.”
Wei Wuxian looks startled, then his teeth flash in a sharp grin. “Still so competitive.” He squeezes too, slicking them both with his own precome, and starts to work their hands in tandem.
This time when he glides his free hand over Jiang Cheng’s body, it’s better. It feels like he’s gathering all the energy in Jiang Cheng toward him, the growing tension of his body pulling Jiang Cheng along. Jiang Cheng’s body tightens and tightens in answer, suspended between Wei Wuxian’s hands. He doesn’t think it’s pleasure, quite, or at least not how people talk about pleasure. But Wei Wuxian whispers at him like it is, urging him to just go on, you’re feeling so good, do it, show me. As if Jiang Cheng’s body can do anything other than what Wei Wuxian pushes it to. That knowledge almost gets Jiang Cheng there, like the mooring line of a ship pulled taut. Almost, almost, nearly.
Jiang Cheng bites his own lip but doesn’t feel the sting. He squeezes his eyes shut with a frustrated sound, twisting as Wei Wuxian gasps above him. He can’t come, can’t even approach that crest. There’s just the bright hum of Wei Wuxian’s body, reverberating through him, Wei Wuxian’s pleasure, so close but not here, not truly in him, not enough—
“Wait, don’t,” Wei Wuxian gasps suddenly. Jiang Cheng’s hand rips itself away from his cock as if he’s been burned and he freezes in place, eyes snapping open. But it’s still okay. Wei Wuxian is still squirming on top of him, still looking down at him, red-bitten mouth wide open and eyes bright. “Wait, A-Cheng, not like this, it has to, I gotta—here, hold yourself—” Useless babble, but Jiang Cheng knows what he wants. He tips himself backwards further into the cloth, wriggling to shift his trousers down from around his thighs to his knees to off. His bare legs draw apart without his input, his hands slide down to his own thighs to pull them up and out. Holding himself spread open for Wei Wuxian. Lewd, shameless, what is he doing? But—“Yeah, just like that,” Wei Wuxian pants. His hand flattens against Jiang Cheng’s solar plexus to pin him in place, too fast and Jiang Cheng flinches, like—he doesn’t know what like. This isn’t how it’d been with Wen Chao and Wen Zhuliu, that had happened in the courtyard and Jiang Cheng is still fine walking through there every damn day, isn’t he? It’s not even like the Ghost General coming at him during the fake fight in the Burial Mounds, dead black eyes and bone-crushing grip and the breathless crack of impact. This is Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian’s familiar hands, just a little bonier and more ragged-nailed than usual. It’s just Wei Wuxian. It’s fine.
Wei Wuxian crowds up against him, the searing skin of his hips sliding against the backs of Jiang Cheng’s thighs, Wei Wuxian’s slick-hot fingers, wet with precome, brushing over his ass. Wei Wuxian’s robes gape open around his upper body as he moves. The old burn scar on his chest is livid red as though it’s reopened, his veins bruise-blue, his bones stark beneath his gray skin. (He may not deign to eat with Jiang Cheng, but apparently doesn’t eat with anybody else either. The jut of his rawbone ribs makes Jiang Cheng’s own body feel hollowed out in accord.) Jiang Cheng stares at Wei Wuxian’s awful gorgeous bareness and can’t let go of his own thighs, fingertips digging deeper into himself as he lets all this happen. Lets it. Even like this, he’s—
“Starving for it,” Wei Wuxian breathes to him, fumbling with himself. “Good, keep that up.” Then his weight shifts and he presses his cock up to Jiang Cheng’s hole and there’s pressure, pressure forcing him open, then drives in—
They both make harsh sounds. Sensation rolls across Jiang Cheng’s body in a stinging wave. It’s overwhelming, all-encompassing—not pleasure, still, but the much of it might be even better than pleasure. Jiang Cheng is inundated, all throughout his heavy body, with Wei Wuxian. Containing him. Holding him. Finally he can really feel Wei Wuxian’s pleasure, his resolve, his heat. Wei Wuxian is inside him.
Like this, sparks in his brain.
Wei Wuxian moves before Jiang Cheng’s ready for it, knocking another noise from both their mouths, driving in too sharp and fast. But he just drags Jiang Cheng’s thigh up over his own shoulder and pries him wider and keeps plunging into him without pause, filling every empty space inside of Jiang Cheng that he hadn’t let himself admit was there. But he knew it deep down, knew he was hollow without this. He wants Wei Wuxian here. He is sick with how much he wants. Like this, just like this, more. More. He rolls his hips back to take Wei Wuxian deeper. Wei Wuxian laughs like he’s surprised and delighted, turns his face to press it against Jiang Cheng’s bent leg; his grinning teeth slide, wet, along the crease of his knee. His hands sweep out across Jiang Cheng’s body, jabbing him in specific places that reverberate at the touch. Then he grabs Jiang Cheng’s other thigh and hooks that one up over his shoulder too, angling Jiang Cheng so he can’t move away, can only take what he’s given. Jiang Cheng’s eyes roll back at how good, how much it is.
The next thrust sends colors sparking across the insides of Jiang Cheng’s eyelids, the next fires pins and needles through his fingers and toes, the next floods his mouth with the taste of salt, the next sends heat surging up from his belly to his lungs to the pit of his chest. His ribcage jolts; he gasps, a huge breath expanding his lungs like he’s burst out of deep water, and coughs. Wei Wuxian laughs again, high and wild. “There,” he says. His hips stutter. “There, A-Cheng, just like that, I can do this as many times as you need, you’re perfect, perfect, there—”
Then Wei Wuxian makes a guttural, incredible noise, shudders and shoves himself deep, piercingly deep. Jiang Cheng cries out. His heart gives a sudden achy, stabbing lurch at the closeness, like it’s trying to pry itself out of his chest to reach Wei Wuxian. His hands scrabble at his own chest, catching on the scars. His eyes fly open.
Wei Wuxian is looking down at him as he drives into Jiang Cheng, eyes bright and crimson as they were in the war, staring like Jiang Cheng is the most fascinating puzzle in the world.
When their eyes meet, Wei Wuxian’s whole body shivers and snaps forward to curve over Jiang Cheng, surround him. They fold down into a single entangled shape. Jiang Cheng’s arms and legs clamp around Wei Wuxian’s body; Wei Wuxian pants and twists against him, open-eyed, sliding a hand down to wrap around Jiang Cheng’s half-hard cock. He wants Jiang Cheng to open up, and Jiang Cheng’s body obeys, spreading wide and soft for him, and Wei Wuxian groans and grinds in even deeper. His hips jolt forward once, twice, then—
“There you are,” says Wei Wuxian, triumphant and cracked open, and for a moment the saying of it makes it true.
—with a final gasp, he shoves inward and pulses into Jiang Cheng’s body.
For a second, it burns with cold, then flames into heat. Jiang Cheng’s whole body wrenches upward in reaction like his heart. He spasms with a strangled noise—the mooring line snapping in the storm, his whole body flooded and helpless and alight and alive—and reflexively sinks his teeth into Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. Silent for once, Wei Wuxian shakes in Jiang Cheng’s arms, trembling so hard his cock slips free on the next thrust, leaving Jiang Cheng’s still-stinging body clenching around nothingness. He keeps rutting forward anyway, spilling sticky white over Jiang Cheng’s stomach, his spread-wide thighs, down onto the coarse cloth beneath them.
Jiang Cheng doesn’t think he’s coming along with Wei Wuxian, exactly, but by the time Wei Wuxian’s hips stop twitching, Jiang Cheng is also slowly going soft in the wet, filthy grip of Wei Wuxian’s lax hand, so, okay. The main thing is that Wei Wuxian is still looking at him, his face dazed and happy like he hasn’t looked in years. And Jiang Cheng’s chest aches, and his body is buzzing and raw and marked by Wei Wuxian’s come, and it’s better than coming would have been, it’s satisfaction after starvation, it’s Wei Wuxian resting heavy and satiated on top of this body, because of this body, it’s good, it’s good. It’s good enough.
It ends. Panting, Wei Wuxian presses his hand again to Jiang Cheng’s chest, and then before he hitches the usual smile back on, his face, infinitesimally, falls.
~
Afterward, they lie on the floor in a pile of the winter cloth they’ve definitely ruined, which Jiang Cheng can’t afford to replace. Wei Wuxian seems to have passed out. He’s pushed himself against Jiang Cheng’s back, arms wrapped around him at an awkward angle. One of his hands curls over Jiang Cheng’s lower abdomen, the other across the knotted scar in his solar plexus. Jiang Cheng lies empty, eyes shut. Everything is still, a ringing blank silence like the aftermath of thunder.
Eventually, after enough crawling hours, Wei Wuxian must think he’s asleep.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into Jiang Cheng’s hair. All the fake confidence from earlier is gone; he sounds about nine, crying over imaginary dogs. “Jiang Cheng, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” His hands tighten, but not enough to wake Jiang Cheng if he were actually asleep. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t. I didn’t.”
Which part, Jiang Cheng thinks, dull and unsurprised. He doesn’t open his eyes. Which part didn’t you mean.
~
Wei Wuxian slips out before dawn even starts to seep across the sky.
~ ~ ~
Jiang Cheng walks quickly up the mountain, outpacing his disciples without thought. His body is heavy, distant; silence roars in his ears. The resentment-poisoned fog swirls with shapes that might be Wei Wuxian’s Wens, being cut down as they try to flee the besieging sects, or they might be the pet corpses, lunging to attack. Not much difference, at this point—Wei Wuxian is probably raising the Wens as they die. Seems he’ll do that for anybody, with one glaring exception.
(Jiang Yanli has been dead for three months. Jiang Cheng had waited every night at her tomb, pacing, sword drawn, expecting, daring—something. Anything. But there was nothing.)
(Not that he wanted A-jie to be dragged back into a mockery of life. Not that he wants her to sit sleepless through the blackest, most silent hours of the night, thinking about how her soul will never rejoin her family, never truly rejoin anyone human, now that she’d been forced into the shape of something else. Not that he wants her to spend empty months and years with nothing to see or feel or hear but the slow failure of her own appalling body: The fluttering, faint prickle of her cells quietly dying, the hollow-ribbed lack of instinct to breathe, the sour-salt tang of rot that is the only thing her tongue can taste, anymore. A numb eternity tracking the sound of her own pulse slowing, slowing, the beats coming far enough apart that she half-thinks that every one is the last—but the final beat somehow never happens.
No. He doesn’t want that for A-jie. But he can’t stand the thought that that bastard won’t even try, not even for her—)
So Jiang Cheng walks through the corpses and the soon-to-be-corpses, slashing them aside with Sandu whenever they fling themselves at him. The pull in Jiang Cheng’s chest draws him upward, onward. Wei Wuxian, he knows to his bones, is in the cave at the summit of the mountain. When Jiang Cheng reaches him, he’ll—he’ll—
The first step is to reach him.
The climb is grueling, but Jiang Cheng’s legs are steady. At last he comes to the clearing with the huts—or what was a clearing. The space is now so thick with fierce corpses that it’s a seething, gray-limbed sea. They claw at the air, at the remains of the huts and trampled gardens. They bite each other, wrench off limbs and heads, groan and grunt and snarl and twitch and fall and rise again. The drier corpses smell of old bone-dust, the fresher ones like meat just starting to turn. He wonders if any of them feel. Are they obligated to be grateful to the great benefactor who resurrected them? Or do they want to close their dead hands around his neck and crush, for what he’d done to them? Maybe none of them can feel or do or decide anything without Wei Wuxian’s permission, just disgusting puppets on invisible strings—since, no matter how much they rage amongst themselves, they don’t enter the cave, which stands dark and open at the far end of the clearing.
As Jiang Cheng breaks through the treeline, the corpses—all blank black eyes and bared hungry teeth, a thousand Ghost Generals—all turn toward him.
He left Zidian as an offering in the ancestral hall months ago, when she stopped biting at his hand and simply went cold. Sandu will have to do. Jiang Cheng doesn’t pause, just plunges down into the horde to start hacking them out of his way, and they surge up to engulf him in turn.
Cold hands claw at him. Broken teeth tear at him. He strains, slashes. The cave entrance seems no closer. But Wei Wuxian is in there. Wei Wuxian is so close Jiang Cheng’s ears throb with his pulse—
Impact.
A thunderclap of sound.
A blast of power.
A breaking that Jiang Cheng feels through his whole body. The crack, then a rush. A breaking river-dam. A punctured organ bleeding out. A clean sword slicing through ligaments and veins and tendons. A ship’s last mooring-line, snapping in a storm.
It all echoes through him, then centers in his chest. He staggers, knees hitting the ground and Sandu dropping from his cold hand—fuck. But the impact strikes the corpses as well: A collective shudder runs through them, then they all go still. Jiang Cheng is still too, stunned by whatever the sensation was.
Then—
A hook digs into the meat of Jiang Cheng’s heart, and yanks.
With a gasp, he’s dragged up off his knees to stagger forward. The corpses stagger too, as if mimicking him. Then, in a flood, they are all rushing at the cave. The first wave of corpses crashes against the barrier over the entrance, shatters themselves against it, shatters the ward itself, and continues on, leaving frayed energy and ripped talismans disintegrating in their wake. Jiang Cheng is carried with the bodies, or is running alongside them. Everything goes dark as the cave closes over his head. The narrow walls of the passage press the mass of corpses inward, grinding Jiang Cheng against cold, thrashing limbs. All the breath is crushed from his body. He forces through. Far ahead, a sliver of red light pierces the blackness; he aims himself toward it. A corpse ahead of him falls and is instantly trampled to pieces. Wet ribs crack under Jiang Cheng’s feet as he races on. He shoves corpses aside, beats them away, rips through them to clear his path deeper, deeper. The corpses all want only one thing, are desperate for only one thing. There are sounds coming from up ahead, a familiar voice arcing high and hoarse. The red light swells. The pulse in Jiang Cheng’s neck thunders. His chest is caving in around something foreign and sharp. A familiar hum burns through his limbs, animating them, pulling them onward. Wei Wuxian is so close.
He doesn’t realize he’s reached the inner chamber until the next corpse he’s disemboweling wrenches apart on its own, head and limbs ripping away to circle the stone ceiling where a vortex of resentment whirls like a tornado, tearing chunks of stone from the walls and floor. Jiang Cheng flings the leftover torso off his arm and looks straight to the center of the storm and—there. There.
Wei Wuxian is at the heart of the mass of slithering, tearing, feeding corpses. He’s barely visible among them, just flashes of gray skin and a black wide-open mouth and red, wet slick red. He’s making noises. The corpses make similar noises. Then a single living hand thrusts up from the tangle, fingers spasming blindly.
Wei Wuxian’s fingernails are cracked, his palm is charred from whatever resentful power surge it was that he’d unleashed earlier, and his wrist is even thinner than the last time Jiang Cheng saw him, when he’d left Jiang Cheng on the storeroom floor. A corpse lunges at the hand, closing its teeth and shaking its head for leverage. When it falls back, toward Jiang Cheng, there’s a ragged-nailed thumb held in its jaws.
Wei Wuxian makes the noise again and vanishes under the pile of bodies. He’s laughing.
Jiang Cheng’s hands collide with the greedy corpse’s skull and crush it. Teeth scatter, as does the wayward thumb. Jiang Cheng drives forward, tearing through the bodies between him and Wei Wuxian. The other corpses rip like wet paper, weak, but there’s so many of them, all trying to get a bite of what isn’t theirs. The slivers of Wei Wuxian come closer, get bigger; warm wet traces of him start to fleck Jiang Cheng’s face and his grasping fingers, but he’s still out of reach. Wei Wuxian shouldn’t even fucking be here. He should have stayed within Lotus Pier, whole, home. He wouldn’t have been able to get A-jie killed. He could have eaten his fill whenever he wanted. If he’d just stayed inside, Jiang Cheng would have kept him safe.
It’s a shock when he finally reaches Wei Wuxian: Living heat, the only warmth in the world, suddenly appearing in his hand. His fingers hook in on instinct, then drag. He has Wei Wuxian by the nape of the neck, hair tangling around his fingers, then—Jiang Cheng grabs with his other hand—by the shoulder, pulling, pulling him in close. They press against each other, their fronts protected even as the corpses claw at their sides and backs, failing to rip them away from one another.
Jiang Cheng can’t keep his balance, and Wei Wuxian can’t hold himself up. Jiang Cheng drives Wei Wuxian down to the floor, covering him with his body. The corpses dive down on top of them, a writhing, crushing, scrabbling weight. The vortex overhead screams.
Jiang Cheng’s face jams into the crook of Wei Wuxian’s lolling neck. Hot blood smears across his mouth; Wei Wuxian’s pulse races under his tongue and in Jiang Cheng’s own throat. The taste of Wei Wuxian’s skin cuts through the ever-present tinge of rot, all bitter salt and gamey copper, so vivid Jiang Cheng’s tongue burns. He rolls his eyes to the side to see Wei Wuxian’s mess of a face. Wei Wuxian is still grinning—it’s possible he can’t help it, the flesh of his lips has been torn away on this side, revealing his teeth and his red gums—but his remaining eye flickers back and forth, prey-animal glazed, then fixes on Jiang Cheng. The eye widens, and then the laughing stops.
A hand (the one with all its fingers) jerks upward as if to worm between their chests. It’s sharp—Wei Wuxian is holding something, the twisted, halved remains of something metal, power blowback still sparking through it; the sharpness inside Jiang Cheng’s chest reverberates in answer. But Wei Wuxian is too weak to finish the motion, with no leverage to pry their chests apart. He twitches in frustration. His head lashes back and forth, bashing Jiang Cheng in the temple, and his jaw opens, sending a wave of blood rolling down his chin as he chokes out another noise.
He’s trying to speak.
Now. Like this. Now, after Wei Wuxian hasn’t really said anything for so long. Now, after everything he’s done to Jiang Cheng. Like Jiang Cheng was too stupid to know. It’s his own body. He figured it out well enough.
So Jiang Cheng doesn’t listen to whatever babble Wei Wuxian is trying to spit out. He keeps pulling Wei Wuxian in, and in, and in. More. More. Wei Wuxian’s smell. The bitter taste of his skin. The wheeze of his lungs. The rhythm of their pulse. The grind of his ribs against Jiang Cheng’s own. The give of his flesh against Jiang Cheng’s teeth. So close, so close.
There you are.
But the problem is what it always has been—they’re still too far. It’s always too far, unless Wei Wuxian is inside.
Wei Wuxian twitches, but doesn’t disagree.
Jiang Cheng opens his jaw, fills his mouth, and bites down.
~
There’s a small crowd waiting outside the cave when Jiang Cheng emerges. The corpses and Wens have all been cut down; the living form a huddled knot around the mouth of the cave. The cultivators are too filthy with mud and blood to tell one sect’s colors easily from another’s, but the man who eventually steps forward has a ragged purple tassel drooping from his belt, and has picked up Sandu, holding it respectfully. Jiang Cheng might recognize him, if he made the effort to.
“Zongzhu,” says the probably-a-Jiang-disciple. His gaze darts all across Jiang Cheng, taking in the blood soaked into Jiang Cheng’s robes, then looks past him into the silent cave, at the butchered bits of corpses strewn everywhere, then back again. “We felt the power burst as the Tiger Tally shattered. And heard… sounds. From inside the cave. The Yiling Laozu is dead?”
Everything is silent. The cultivators shiver and whisper, sure, and the resentful wind whistles, but Jiang Cheng’s body is silent. The unbroken half of the Tiger Tally, enclosed securely in his ribs, is silent. Nothing stirs inside him anymore. On his skin, bloody offal traces down his body in thick rivulets that he doesn’t feel, slowly congealing.
He’s supposed to answer. Jiang Cheng’s mouth opens. “Yes,” he says.
The sects blow out a collective sigh of relief. Their eyes still show white like spooked horses’, but the whispers turn to mutters, then to muted cheers. They thump each other on the shoulders, congratulating themselves. Their swords flash in the dim light. So do their grinning teeth.
Good news! Wei Wuxian is dead!
Sandu Shengshou has cut down the Yiling Laozu!
About damn time. Little Jiang-zongzhu should have ended this years ago—
“Zongzhu,” says the disciple. He comes close, offering Jiang Cheng’s sword. Jiang Cheng should take it, but his hands are stiff with caked gore. It’s under his nails. It’s inside his clothes. It’s caught between his teeth, the salty, gamey taste slowly fading.
Wait, Sandu Shengshou’s sword was left outside the cave. The bastard wasn’t cut down, he was whipped down!
No, it was a brawl, with bare hands—
No, backlash from the broken Tiger Tally—
No, Jiang—
No, we all heard the sounds! The corpses, enraged at their ill-treatment at his hands, all turned on him and—
The corpses—
His own army—
Ha, what a fitting end! The Yiling Laozu, devoured by his fierce corpses without even a corpse of his own to leave behind!
Jiang Cheng makes a noise through his disgusting teeth. The disciple pulls up short, sword still outstretched; the other cultivators fall silent again. Jiang Cheng listens to the noise ring off the walls of the cave and realizes it’s the same one Wei Wuxian was making, before:
He’s laughing.
(It is a pretty good joke.)
“That’s right,” he says. “That’s mostly right. Though I’d say he did leave behind a corpse.”